


Innefable

by fourfreedoms



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Genderswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2011-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-24 04:02:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared and Jensen are angels in God's army who can't stand each other. During some supposedly restful downtime, it comes to the attention of someone very important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innefable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ignited](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ignited).



> This is for ignited, I'd pretend it's for her birthday, but that was so long ago, I might as well just be like HAPPY RANDOM PRESENT! It's inspired by _Good Omens_ , but it's also the culmination of two years worth of research for an original work.

Ineffable  
“There are people out there shooting one another!”  
“Well that’s just it, isn’t it? They’re doing it themselves. It’s what they really want to do. I just assisted them. Think of it as a microcosm of the universe. Free will for everyone. Ineffable, right?”  
 _-Good Omens_

*

Jensen’s father used to say that God and Satan could be best understood as two warring philosophers trying to prove their ideas upon the Earth. Campbell Brodie Ackles told his young son that God had grasped ever at understanding the nature of his own existence. It was heresy, although Jensen would come to learn that it was not the belief that mattered, but the lips that uttered it.

After staring at sparkling nebulas and the empty vacuums of black holes for an eternity, God puzzled at his own ability to reason. Satan continued to follow the threads of vivid galaxies and star systems, determined that all would be revealed in his infinite patience. But God was bored and frustrated and while Satan was busy weighing deep red stars and counting blue ones, he had an idea.

Being fond of threes God created life on Earth, third planet from one of his favorite suns, and set about an experiment to divine the truth of being. After several billion years of keen staring, he started to realize that a watched pot never boiled, and just as he was about to scrap the whole thing, man emerged and asked the same question God had thousands of times before, “Why?”

Satan, at the other end of the universe, had finally sensed that all was not quite the same. He rushed to God and found him perplexed, staring at his creation. “They must have order,” God said, waving his hand at the small planet, “a system where the most benefit is brought to the greatest number of people.” But Satan said no, and spurned the burgeoning governments that were slowly building on earth. “In your system, people are used as the means to an end, yoked by order and hierarchy,” Satan pointed out. But God could conceive of no other way and Satan would not budge.

Their disagreement built into a war, Jensen’s father said, that would never stop being fought, down onto the day that Jensen breathed his last breath, until they destroyed God’s experiment between them and they turned on to better things.

Later when Jensen stood amid the smoking ruin of his house, he thought, father you were wrong. The only thing he had left was his skin and the charred mess of his favorite book, completely abandoned in the harsh beauty of the firmament.

Stuck in the vast emptiness of space with only brightly burning stars and a brother too opposite to understand him, God created the world because he was lonely.

*

The moaning woke him up. His first thought was that the ash-coated horror of his dreams had followed him into life. His heart pounded, blood beating through his veins too fast. The hair at the nape of his neck prickled uncomfortably, and his mouth was filled with the bitterness of adrenaline. He felt like he was going to fly apart. For a moment it seemed all the enormity and weight of God was compressed into the room with him.

The sound came again, followed by two hitching gasps and a sharp thump against the wall. He sighed and punched his pillow, brain slowly telling his heart to calm. The analog clock on the wall read quarter to three. He’d managed two hours of sleep this time and inevitably the asshole he shared his wall with, Padalecki, had to ruin it.

This girl was a wailer, filling his room with embarrassing un-muffled ululations. The one on Tuesday had shouted Padalecki’s name over and over like the over-sexualized idiot had forgotten who he was and ordered her to remind him every fifteen seconds.

He rolled to the foot of his bed and laid spread eagle, thinking I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, over and over, building rage and impotence up in his blood. But not even his hatred was strong enough to make Padalecki hear him. He never did. Tomorrow they would probably fight in training and they would push it farther than their commanders wanted. It would be like a drug—one hit good for a short time.

*

Jensen deflected a blow with his arm and ducked under another before kicking the legs out from under his opponent, gratified by the hollow thump the other man made hitting the mat. Jensen’s ribs and knuckles ached. He felt like he could hear his heartbeat in every hurt. He’d pushed himself too hard today, too much exertion, too much coffee, not enough sleep.

He loomed over the guy, foot strategically placed over the diaphragm, and waited for him to tap out. Slowly, Herminius or Hilarius—some idiot from the light skirmishers who’d had the balls to challenge him—raised his hand to tap twice on the mats. The win filled him with a shot of revitalizing pride.

I can do this, I am good at this, he thought.

Captain Lewis, his CO, clapped. “Goodness, Ackles, you’ve been eating your Wheaties.”

Jensen blinked. “I’m afraid the Captain’s reference is lost on me, sir.”

The Captain shook his head. “Of course it is.” He smiled crookedly and moved on to another pair of sparring partners.

“Somebody needs to get laid,” a singsong voice ran across his abraded nerves like nails on a chalk board. He stiffened and brushed sweaty hair out of his eyes. Padalecki leaned against the wall, winding fabric over his knuckles. He grinned, white teeth seeming to flash. Padalecki looked well-rested and relaxed and it made Jensen’s head throb.

“Not to sink to your vulgar level, but go fuck yourself,” he said conversationally. Padalecki laughed and pushed past him to take his place on the mats.

Jensen stared after him, frozen for a moment. He turned and angrily tugged the protective skeins of fabric off his hands.

“You handled that well,” Derry, the unit communications officer, said and handed him a water bottle. “There wasn’t any bloodshed, no broken bones, in fact, nobody even lost a tooth. Truly this must be an auspicious day.”

Jensen pursed his lips. He said, “I grow weary of being confined to base.”

Derry rolled his eyes. “Go take a shower. You stink.” Jensen arched a brow at him, but left, his muscles pulling and screaming at him. Everything felt wrong and heavy, not just the earthly cage of his body. He realized with a certain joylessness that his default was bad, but this was shit. The tunnel to the locker room was dark and airless, but even the soaring towers and solariums of the base were starting to feel that way.

The showers were blessedly empty when he got there. Derry would’ve said he was unfit for company, but Jensen always figured it was company that was unfit for him. He turned on the tap and stared at the water pouring out of the shower spigot, waiting for it to warm. Sometimes it felt like they were having it sent up from the bowels of hell for how long it took.

A loud whoop echoed against the tiles, and showers flared to life on the other side of the aisle. He tensed and turned up the intensity of the spray until it was beating at him hard enough to sting. He healed fast, like most of his kind, but his left knee had been bothering him for months. He'd probably have to see the medicus about it.

“How was Tulia?” Chad Tarquin, Padalecki’s henchman, said. The low-country accent was unmistakable. Jensen grit his teeth. Padalecki was everywhere. He ducked his head under the onslaught of the spray.

Padalecki replied, “Loud.”

“Fuck off! You wouldn’t think it to look at her.”

“I’m not joking. She probably kept Ackles up half the night. He seems even more humorless than usual.”

Jensen thought about diving around the bank and showing him humorless. His nakedness was probably the only thing that stopped him. They’d been in seventeen fights since his plebe year and caught for it every time. They couldn’t get away with anything when the eyes of heaven were upon them. His sore muscles remembered countless extra rounds of PT as punishment, pushing through the obstacle courses sullenly next to Padalecki. These days, punishments were harsh black tick marks under his name that would shunt him off the promotional grid. Funny what they said about his kind, when it also said ‘too much human nature’ on all his performance reviews.

He had always known things would be difficult. Angelic-human hybrids made up the entirety of the _Legio Deus Terra_ , or in the modern Lingua Franca, the Corps, and yet they were held to the same standards of their full-blooded parents. God had bargained only once in his time and it had been for his son. He was unyielding with his servants. Jensen knew it would be more difficult for him, with parents ash and dust, and a name irrevocably tarnished. He couldn't escape it, but that didn't stop him from being angry about it.

He smacked the shower tile with the flat of his palm, listening to Tarquin and Padalecki’s raucous laughter and felt resentment well in him like an unlimited reservoir.

*

 

“Ackles!” a voice called as he walked the halls back to his room. His hair was still wet and dripping down onto his collar.

He turned and found a _Hastati_ commander striding quickly down the hall, marked by the sword and shield on his shoulder knot. His face was stern, Roman features still strong. His family had clearly done much to keep their bloodline pure since Constantine’s establishment of the _Legio_. He rapidly snapped to attention, even as he smirked internally. Inbreeders.

“Relax,” the man said. “I did not come to reprimand you.”

“Sir?” Jensen replied.

“I saw you on the courts today. Your discipline is astonishing. You deserve much praise.”

Jensen bowed his head. “Thank you, sir.”

“There’s some talk of creating special ops teams. Reorganizing the maniple to create guerilla strike squads.”

Jensen furrowed his brow. His company was as traditional as any other in the legion. It was manipular force that could be broken down into fully operational combat units, because pitched battles demanding the assemblage of all three battle lines, _Hastati, Princeps, and Triarii,_ were rare and unsought by both sides. He wasn’t sure what a guerilla strike team could accomplish that his unit, a _contubernium_ , couldn’t. Angels were too immutable, too infinite to shirk at change, but neither did they change for the sake of it.

“Now, you’re in the Princeps,” the commander continued, “which are always in need of accomplished service-people, but I’m thinking it would be worth it to pull you.”

A reassignment. He blinked. Sweet trinity, to never have to deal with Padalecki’s constant joking again, that’d be welcome. He wondered how much the commander would want him once he went into his background.

“If we do, we’ll probably take Padalecki as well, he’s one of the best snipers…”

Jensen wanted to sigh. Of course. He’d never be free of him. It was starting to feel like some kind of karmic retribution, for what he didn't know. The last thing either of them needed was to be shoved in some condensed new-fangled squad with fewer people to act as a buffer. Jensen had some care to be promoted _some_ day.

The commander still talked, but Jensen stood bored, thinking of exercises he should go through for his knee. If it showed on his face the commander didn’t take notice.

“Commander Titus, you aren’t trying to poach one of mine, are you?” Captain Lewis called down the hall. He carried folders thick with duty rosters, no doubt having gone to Commander Suetonius after putting the unit through its paces on the practice court.

“You’ve caught me,” Titus said. “Well, think about it, Ackles.” He nodded and Jensen saluted, watching him walk carefully past his captain.

Captain Lewis shook his head when the other officer had disappeared down the hall. “I hope you don’t want to go, Ackles, because I’ll throw the gauntlet down for you.”

Jensen stared at him. He said slowly, “That’s very flattering, sir.”

“Do I sense some mock?” the captain replied, laugh lines emerging around his eyes, “Get out of my sight. Go off base or something. Stop calling so much attention to yourself by working so hard!”

Jensen bit his lip. “Yes sir.”

*

He didn’t sleep. He sat motionless, propped up against his headboard. The morning bell sounded, once, twice, so loud the glass in his windows vibrated. The other side of the wall was mercifully silent. He sighed and rolled out of bed, carefully getting dressed.

He was made for war. They all were. Some fought for duty, some for the pressure of their compassionate hearts, and some because life had made them into weapons. There wasn’t anything else left. It meant he didn’t know what to do with himself in times like these. What was he good at besides breaking a man’s legs and slitting his throat?

His phone vibrated on the dresser as he jammed his feet into his shoes.

“Derry says you actually managed to avoid a fight yesterday?” Hiver said without preamble when he put the phone to his ear.

Jensen sighed. “Is there a reason that you’re bothering me at first bells?”

“Yeah, fool, I’m standing in your mess hall right now!” Before Jensen could dismiss Hiver he continued, “And you’ll show up too, because if you don’t, I’m telling everybody that you cried the first time you fucked Yoanna.”

“That’s not what happened!”

“Bitch, please.”

Jensen’s stomach rejected the idea of breakfast, the smell of food at this hour, but he’d known even before Hiver had finished talking that he was going to go. He said, “I’ll see you in five minutes.”

Hiver had already hung up.

*

“The Thrones keep talking about the tide turning, but I’m not seeing it, we go out there, put some bullets in demons, and come back with five casualties for our troubles,” Derry said, chucking his half-eaten breakfast at the trashcan from across the room, not even bothering to watch as it sailed into the garbage.

“Faith, you just have to have faith,” Hiver responded, waving the strip of bacon skewered on his fork around. Jensen absently swirled his yogurt around in his cup. Hiver stared at him and then asked, “What’s with you, emo princess?”

“Padalecki said it best. He needs to get laid,” Derry replied. He raised his hands at Jensen’s dark look. “I mean, you’ve been beating the shit out of everybody in practice for a week. You’re a little uptight.”

Jensen rocked back in his chair until the legs left the floor. “I’m always 'uptight' as you put it.”

“Yeah well, now you’re acting like an unpredictable psycho,” Hiver said, waving his fork at him. “Maybe you do need to get laid, or like a hobby.”

Derry laughed. “Getting laid can be Jensen’s hobby!”

“You’re both idiots,” he said as he stood. He nodded to Hiver, “And _you_ need to return to your unit.”

“Miss you too, psycho,” Hiver called after him.

*

He cleaned his weapons for the fourth time that day, brushed his teeth, walked twice around the lake. Hiver and Derry called, fighting for the phone and laughing loudly. A bunch of the people they’d known from the academy were getting together. They wanted go over the margin to drink themselves sloppy and pretend their fears didn’t exist. They said, “We know you won’t come, but you should.”

Jensen never went with them. The only time he went Cyprian side was on assignment. There were too many consequences if he made the smallest mistake, the slightest slip-up. He’d had to prove a lot to get into the corps, joy riding among the unwitting humans wasn’t worth the risk.

After staring at his dinner for thirty minutes, pushing pieces of sodden broccoli around, he almost wished for the blaring alarms and the cold voice flooding every room “ _Commanipulares_ ” summoning them for battle. A horrible thought. Even his earthly father, if he still lived, would’ve condemned him for that one. He stared at the dark screen of his cell-phone and set it aside.

Maybe he’d get a book from the library, a true sign of desperation. He’d only been once or twice. It was dark and musty, windowless, filled with glass cases of curios and ancient reliquaries. It was a painful reminder of what he’d lost, and the tomes housed therein were old-fashioned and fusty. But he was going to go insane if he stayed here, pacing himself into exhaustion.

It was a long walk to the library, the living quarters yielding to the opulent halls of the old fortifications, older than the Mycenaeans. The stern countenances of the slain lined the walls, the dark lines of their wings visible on every forearm. The heavy oak door of the library was almost hidden among the heavy guilt frames and mosaics. It opened soundlessly under his fingertips, revealing the dark room. He slipped inside like a trespasser. The heavy bust of Constantine stared at him from the end of a bookcase. He averted his eyes in respect and hurried down an aisle of books. He wandered for half an hour, aimlessly pulling leather-bound volumes off the shelves. Some were so old that their spines curved inwards. The translucent frontispieces looked like skin in the light. Nothing caught his eye.

He stopped when he heard a rustling shuffling sound. He'd thought he was alone, but when he stepped out of the last aisle he found Padalecki before the fire. He turned his eyes away, his _dexter_ forearm aching. Padalecki was lost in the large tome spread over his knees and yet despite his bent head, his practiced ease—he knew Jensen was there, perhaps he'd known Jensen was there the entire time. Jensen could take the free pass to let it go for tonight. But he found the buzzing rising up in his ears, itching his spine and setting his teeth on edge. He didn’t want to let it go. He wanted this fight.

“Last place I’d ever thought to find you,” he said, voice ugly.

Padalecki didn’t look up, but his knuckles whitened. “Funny, I come here because I know you’ll never be here.” He shut the book on his lap. “You can read, right?”

“Weak,” Jensen said. After years of barbed arrows shot back and forth between them, it was like tossing a stick.

“Not in the mood,” Padalecki said and rose out of his chair, all set to turn away. Jensen tracked him with his eyes.

“I despise you,” it slid out of his mouth without warning.

Padalecki made a face, and set the book set aside. “You’re just itching for it, aren’t you? A fucking whore for it. You need me to hurt you?” He paused, a sharp laugh on his lips. “Kinky.”

And that was it. It slid under his skin and made him forget his training. They’d moved closer during the conversation and all it took was one strong shove and they were grappling. The familiar road rose up to greet them.

The chair fell back and Padalecki tripped over it, back smacking against an aged mahogany escritoire with all the force of gravity. A vase of lilies placed decoratively on top of the cabinet upended and pitched green filmy water and pollen all over him. The vase teetered on the cabinet edge, before tumbling over and crashing to the floor, narrowly missing his head. A startled epithet fell out of Jensen’s mouth, dumped amid the detritus of the antique. They stared at it in shock.

“That’s another three more months cooling our heels on base,” Padalecki said, wiping a bright smear of yellow pollen over his cheek. “You’re such an idiot.”

“You provoked me,” Jensen said, getting down on his knees to pick up the pieces.

Padalecki stared at him for a long moment, expression incredulous. “Oh forget it. It’s not worth it.”

“How often do people come here?” he asked when Padalecki bent down beside him, carefully picking up the largest pieces. Padalecki pricked himself on a shard and blood bloomed on the glass. He bit his lip and wiped it away with the tip of his thumb. Jensen didn’t look. He knew that the slice in Padalecki’s index finger had already healed. Bastard.

“You can’t mean to hide it?” Padalecki brushed sodden hair out of his eyes.

“I’m not spending another hour on base for you!”

Padalecki elbowed him in the gut. “You make it sound like it’s my fault.”

“That’s because it is!” Jensen stood, hands filled with spiky pieces of thin-blown glass. He dumped it vehemently in the trash.

Padalecki swept the shards under the rug. “False! The first fight we ever got into was all you. I was just walking around minding my own business, and you like, took exception to my face! And now it's all Lakers vs. Celtics!”

Jensen turned around and blinked. “What?”

Padalecki clicked his tongue and gathered up the sodden remains of the flowers. He shook them at Jensen. “You’re such a robot. I’m going to bed. You can deal with the wet spot.”

*  
Jensen woke up again at first bells. This time he didn’t even try to go back to sleep. He pulled some sweats on and went to the weight room. He was surveying the weights when a noise came from behind. The sound of padding feet startled him. Who had got through the door without him noticing? He whirled about, ready to strike out at whoever dared to sneak up on him.

“Ugh! Calm down, idiot!” a slender-finger hand caught his wrist. He stared at a lanky young woman in baggy clothes. She had very white teeth bared in an angry grimace.

Jensen pressed a hand to his heart, fancying he could feel the force of it against his palm. “You startled me.”

She viciously tugged her hand out of his grip. “I noticed, look—”

He could see the strong arabesques of the wings descending from her elbow to the knobs of her wrist. “Are you new? I haven’t seen you on base before.” She was pretty even in her annoyance and Jensen was a sucker for the long curls that fell about her face.

“What?” She shook her head, her face taking on an incomprehensibly angry expression. “Ackles, I’ve been—”

Jensen snapped to attention when she said his name. “Do I know you?”

“Yes, you know me!” She glanced at the mirrored wall over his shoulder. “Do I really look that different?”

Jensen stared at her. He didn’t know her at all. She was tall enough that he wouldn’t forget. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t remember you.”

“You are such a—” she blew out a breath. “Ackles! It’s me, Padalecki.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Pardon?” he said.

She crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. “Are you simple? I’m Padalecki.”

He said, “You seem a bit confused.”

“No, asshole, I’m not confused, you are! This is all your fault!”

Jensen sat down on a padded bench. “Listen, whoever you are, Padalecki is a man and unless you went Cyprian side and had gender reassignment in the six hours since I last saw you, you cannot be him!” His eyes dropped to the breasts her crossed arms were crushing together.

“I didn’t go Cyprian side, asshole, it was the damn flowers!” She grabbed his shoulder, nails digging in. “I could wring your stupid neck!”

“Right. Did Hiver put you up to this?” he said, shaking her off. “This would be exactly his sort of prank.”

“ _Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo_!” she shouted and hit him hard on the shoulder. That would definitely bruise. “The worst fight we ever got in, just after the first wing was inked into our arms, you cut me so bad that I had to get the lines redone when the skin healed clean.”

Jensen had watched Padalecki wipe the blood away, the bare slash of skin appearing unmarked through the unfurled wing. He blinked aghast at the girl standing before him.

“The time I struck you right under our platoon leader’s nose was because you called me a faggot.”

Jensen winced. “Not one of my better moments.”

She shoved away from him. “Then you admit it’s me?”

Jensen ran his eyes down her body and while suddenly Padalecki’s pointy nose and prominent cheek bones jumped out at him like neon lighting, he thought he could forgive himself for not believing sooner. His hair wasn’t even the same length. “Are you--are you still taller than me?”

She said flatly, “Are you serious? We have bigger problems!”

Jensen grinned. “Like a uterus? Listen, I’m not sure what I have to do with this.”

She dove at him and they toppled over the bench with a crash. The bar fell out of its cradle and knocked into the free weights and they tumbled to the floor, barely missing them. Jensen found himself flat on his back, side aching, with Padalecki lying over him, thumbs pressing dangerously over his Adam’s apple. His head felt wobbly and liquid. He must have hit it on something.

“It’s your fault that I’m like this! Those damn flowers were Hesperidic fertility orchids and I got the pollen everywhere.” His vision sparkled, tunneling outward and Padalecki continued railing. “You can never leave it alone and I always pay the price for it.”

“Didn’t know…” he mumbled, batting weakly at her arms. “I…didn’t know.”

Her fingers went slack and she rolled off him. Jensen hacked and coughed. When he finally gathered enough energy to pick himself up off the floor, he found her sitting on the bench, flexing and clenching her fingers. Her hair tumbled wild about her shoulders, made her look completely mad.

“What were they doing in the library?” he said, hoping if he shook his head enough the world would bounce into focus.

A door banged open at the other end of the room cutting off anything that Padalecki might’ve said. “Good morning, Ackles,” Captain Lewis said, striding into the room, a towel draped over his neck. “I thought told you to get off base—” he paused when he saw Padalecki, pale eyes quickly noting the mess around the room. “And I don’t believe I know you. Do you have the proper clearance to be here?”

She froze, mouth open. Jensen looked back and forth between them, pulling himself up off the ground with the rack of weights. More thumped to the ground. “I—I—she’s my girlfriend.” The captain raised his brows and Jensen rushed to continue, dragging her tattooed forearm up so that the Captain could see it. “We have never spoken of it, because we know the tenuous situation that puts us in. I'm sure you understand.”

Captain Lewis's face softened and he turned back to Padalecki. “Well, be at ease, visitors in the corps are readily allowed on the premises.”

She nodded slowly and then seemed to regain something of herself. “It’s nice to meet you. I was…I was just going to take him for breakfast, uh, Cyprian side.” And then completely disregarding all the regs, she dragged him from the room by his elbow.

On the other side of the door she glared at him. “You’re such an idiot! What possessed you to say girlfriend? Who knows how long I’m going to be stuck this way! They’ll figure it out and then we’ll be hosed! Those orchids are a controlled substance!”

“Hey listen, they were just sitting there in the library, that's not our fault!”

She tightened her grip on his elbow and dragged him through the halls. People sleepily blinked at them as they passed. “We’re supposed to know better, idiot! You already have like 80 demerits for starting fights with me!” The door of her room disengaged under her palm and she dragged him inside. “And now you’ve gone and said I’m your girlfriend. Why couldn’t you have said cousin?”

He pulled his arm out of her grasp, face hardening. “He would’ve known it was a lie for sure. I have no family.”

She collapsed on the bed, head in her hands, knees splayed out inelegantly. “Sorry, I’m sorry about that,” she said softly. She looked up, eyes red rimmed. “I’m just—stuck with you now. I can’t go home until this blows over. If my mother finds out, ah I don’t even want to think about her finding out.”

Jensen swallowed. “At least...at least we’re technically on leave.”

Padalecki raised her face—his face in horror. “I’m crying.” One tear ran down her—his cheek before he could brush it a way.

After he managed to dry his eyes, Padalecki demanded that they find him a bra. “Walking around with these things flapping about—no good, man.”

Jensen sighed. Padalecki’s nipples also stood out rather prominently against his worn black t-shirt. Jensen couldn’t stop staring at them, a bra sounded like a good plan. Derry’s girlfriend was in B company. She’d probably be able to lend them one, or at least point them in the direction of someone who could.

Padalecki followed him to her room with his arms crossed over his chest. Jensen didn’t realize until he got there that he was going to have to explain why he needed a bra. But as soon as “Could I borrow a bra?” came out of his mouth, he appreciated how crazy he looked.

Derry’s girlfriend, Julia, blinked at him. Her ink was still fresh and she picked at the scabs. “Uh, is this for some unit camaraderie?”

Jensen gaped at her, grasping for an appropriate story. Padalecki shoved him out of the doorway and pushed past to shake hands with Julia. “Hi, I’m Jensen’s girlfriend, Jared.” He shot Jensen a dark look over his shoulder. “I lost my luggage on the trip to come visit.”

“Oh, I’m Julia, and that sucks.” She eyed his ribcage critically. “I guess we might be the same size, but even so the commissary has sports bras. They don’t do that at your posting?”

“Wonderful, thanks,” Jensen interrupted quickly, before they had to come up with any more stories. “We’ll pick some up there.”

She waved at them. “Nice to meet you, Jared.”

“Yeah, you too,” Padalecki got out before the door slammed.

“Jared?” Jensen whispered furiously, he scanned the halls for passersby. “That’s not a woman’s name, and you blame me for not being able to lie?”

Padalecki snapped back, “No, but it’s my name, and there isn’t any way I’m going to start answering to Betty or Lucy.”

“Right, well, you don’t need me to get a bra,” Jensen said, turning to go off in the opposite direction.

Padalecki’s hand on his wrist drew him up short. “Oh no, buddy, if I have to suffer through this…”

“I have never so ardently hated anybody in my life,” Jensen grumbled.

Padalecki shot an entirely unfriendly grin at him.

The commissary was dark when they got there, lit up by only a dusty lamp. Jensen had always had his equipment delivered and he was surprised at the shelves and shelves of boots and gloves.

Padalecki found the sports bras folded in a bin in the back next to the panty hose. “How do I know which one is the right size? What is this fuckery? 32AA 36D 34B?” Nobody was working, which was probably a good thing. How would they ever explain a 22-year-old woman who hadn’t yet worn a bra?

“You don’t take them off often enough to know?” Jensen said pulling through a pile of sunglasses.

“Oh man, if you think looking at the labels is part of the sex act, no wonder you’re like HAL3000.” Padalecki snorted and then pulled one out, holding it out before him speculatively. “Yeah, definitely not a C cup.”

He threw it back and pulled out another one. Jensen peered at him. Padalecki was probably a B, maybe a generous A. Not like Jensen paid attention to those sorts of things. He was more of a legs man himself. He nearly choked on his tongue when Padalecki hitched his shirt up over his head and gave him an eyeful of tan breasts. He popped on a pair of aviators, but his vision was too good to blot out the sight even through the dark gloom of the room.

“I can feel you perving on my breasts,” Padalecki said, struggling with the catch at the back. He kept dropping the back of the band before he could fasten it together. “Ugh, how do women put these things on?”

Jensen grumbled and walked into Padalecki’s space, grabbing the two ends and sliding the hooks together. Padalecki inhaled in relief and peered over his shoulder at Jensen and they were too close together. Jensen nearly stumbled backing up.

“I don't understand how you can still be taller than me.”

“That again.” Padalecki pulled his shirt back on. “I can’t believe I’m attempting to make you feel better, but I’m taller than everybody, dude—except maybe a pro-basketball player.” At Jensen’s confused face, he threw up his hands. “I swear, have you been hiding under a rock?”

Jensen ducked his head. He looked down at his right arm and the sleeve that hid the three black bands around his forearm. He—he didn’t know. Jensen realized that Padalecki had never done the same digging that he had, had never fanatically peered into Jensen’s whole past. Jensen, on the other hand, knew that Padalecki’s mother was one of the Dominions, Tsaphiel, that he was not her first child, not even her first by Padalecki’s sire, a human librarian who still lived Cyprian side. He’d always felt crushed by what the marks meant, but Padalecki didn’t even know. It made him feel blank and empty, the sleepless days catching up and hooking him around the neck.

He pushed past the racks of clothes, out into the lit hallway. “I’m going to take a nap. Go research how to turn yourself back.” He left without a glance backwards. He sensed Padalecki’s eyes trained on him.

*

He woke up to a pounding on his door. It took him awhile to work up the energy to get out of bed. He felt nauseated and more tired than he had when he’d gone to sleep. He stumbled to the doorway, brushing grit out of his eyes. He found Hiver on the other side of the door, garment bag draped over one arm.

“You look like shit,” he said, point blank.

Jensen sighed. “What do you want?”

“Word on the base is that you have a girlfriend?” Hiver adjusted the bag. “What? I ship out and you stop talking to me?”

Jensen gaped at him, finally working out, “I’m sorry, it’s a very...new relationship. I’ll uh…introduce you...soon.” He made a face just thinking how that would go. He couldn’t believe Captain Lewis of all people had been gossiping.

Hiver nodded satisfied. “You can do it tonight.”

Jensen narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Dude,” Hiver barked, “did you forget?” At Jensen’s headshake, his mouth dropped open. He hoisted the garment bag up in front of him. “The gala tonight? It’s the vernal equinox, fool!”

“Fuck!” He nearly punched the doorframe. "That is just...that is just...too fucking much."

“You’re such a retard! You need to get your shit together, man.” Hiver laughed at him. “Hey, but at least you have a date?”

Jensen groaned. Oh yes, at least he had that. Hiver patted him on the shoulder and walked off, whistling. Jensen waited until he was out of earshot before hammering on Padalecki’s door. It was wrenched open quickly, revealing an unsmiling Padalecki.

“It’s the Ball of the Spring Equinox tonight,” Jensen rushed out.

Padalecki said, “So? I can’t go. There’s no way to turn me back. Thankfully shape changes require too much energy to last long, so I should be back in a week or two, no thanks to you,” nonplussed.

“They’re expecting you there as my girlfriend.”

Padalecki stared at him, expression incredulous, before sending a fist into his gut. “Infinity, you are so stupid!” Jensen fell back, breath compressing out of his lungs.

*

After he’d recovered his air source Padalecki stormed off to find Julia. “Maybe she can lend me a dress,” he said, over his shoulder.

Jensen had to dig his suit out the back of his closet. It was clean, but it needed heavy ironing. He amused himself as he flattened the creases in his shirt by imagining Padalecki attempting to put makeup on. He had to admit, Padalecki’s company or not, he was definitely not the one getting the raw end of the deal.

He still hadn’t heard any word from Padalecki nearly two hours later. He started to get worried. Perhaps they’d been found out. Perhaps they were coming to toss him in confinement—he and Padalecki certainly had enough strikes. He paced back and forth in his small room, finally putting his suit on just for lack of anything better to do. He had just fastened the cufflinks when Padalecki called through the door, “I’m ready, asshole.”

Jensen took a deep breath to steel himself from whatever monstrosity waited on the other side and then threw it open. Padalecki towered above him. He ran his eyes up from the dainty high-heeled shoes to the cleavage-inducing neckline and caught his breath. “You look—”

Padalecki chuckled and said, “I know, I’d fuck me.” He clicked his tongue and tried to ease the hemline of his dress down. It was obviously made for a much shorter woman and Jensen thought he detected the hint of a flush over Padalecki’s cheeks. Padalecki ducked his head and said, “I told them that I couldn’t wear heels because your ego can’t take me being taller than you, but they told me the dress required it.” Jensen nodded, still a little dumbstruck. There was makeup and jewelry, and Padalecki didn’t look like at all like the hot mess he'd been hoping for.

“Would you say something? You make me feel like I’m talking to a wall!”

Jensen shook his head to clear it. “We’re going to be late.”

The gala was in full swing when they got there, couples whirling about on the dance floor. All weapons were left at the door as courtesy to the equinox, when day and night were equal—a symbol of their eternal struggle with the demons. Their kind did not partake at such events, but servers carried trays of juice around. Padalecki dragged him down to sit at a bench, partially obscured by a potted plant. He’d stumbled three times on the walk over, grip tight around Jensen’s elbow. He was ridiculous, a giant among women trying to tiptoe daintily across the floor. Jensen sat next to him quietly and hoped nobody would notice them.

“Sweet infinity, there’s Tulia,” Padalecki said, staring across the ballroom. Jensen looked up to follow his gaze. Tulia was barely clothed in a little sheath of fabric. Padalecki was somewhat slack jawed. A scrubby blond brought her a glass of punch and Padalecki laughed. “Tarquin, that asshole, macking on her while I’m gone,” he turned to Jensen to grin.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Jensen asked.

Padalecki shrugged. “Eh, she’s hot, but it wasn’t like it was pulse-poundingly awesome.”

Jensen raised a brow.

“Oh man, you heard everything.” Padalecki’s face was sheepish, but it quickly melted away into his amused default. Jensen shook his head and peered studiously at the orchestra as they played an up-tempo waltz. He couldn’t help thinking about how close their hands were on the bench.

“So you’re the lucky lady,” Hiver said, startling them both.

Padalecki stared at him for a moment and then shot a tentative glance at Jensen. He tottered to his feet as Jensen stood and said, “I’m er…Jared.” He leaned against Jensen’s side, ostensibly because they were so very much on love, but Jensen found himself accepting a good portion of Padalecki’s weight.

Hiver shook his proffered hand and said, “Jared—that’s funny. That’s the name of Jensen’s Arch-nemesis.” Jensen halted, eyes opening wide.

Padalecki hid an amused half-smile behind his hand. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, Jensen hates him so much he’s practically loving him.” He looked around the room, missing Padalecki’s awkward smile. “Come to think of it, funny he’s not here.”

Jensen felt his face fill with blood, cheeks heating up uncomfortably. “All right, that’s enough out of you.”

“Aww,” Padalecki choked out. He trembled in the loop of Jensen’s arm, head bowed to hide his face. Hiver didn’t seem to notice Padalecki’s silent shaking. A good thing, since he probably looked like he had palsy. Jensen hated his life. He really did. They should’ve thrown him off the Tarpeian Rock and been done with it. Padalecki’s eyelashes brushed lightning-quick over his jaw as he noiselessly laughed and Jensen felt his face flaming even darker.

“Hi, guys,” Julia said, arm entwined with Derry’s. They had to push through the crowd to join them. She sent a small wave to Padalecki.

Jensen’s eyes would be rolling out of his head if etiquette didn’t demand good cheer.

“Don’t mind me,” Padalecki chuckled. “Hiver was just amusing me.”

“I was?” Hiver said, a bit floored.

Jensen elbowed Padalecki hard enough that he swayed away, like the mast of a ship, before swaying back.

“I did a good job, didn’t I, Jensen?” Julia said.

“Er, what?” he stared at her blankly.

“Getting her dressed up,” she said, furrowing her brows. “She looks great, doesn’t she?”

“I uh…” he shot a quick look at Hiver and then said, “Yes, very lovely.”

Padalecki snorted.

“You do,” Hiver said, “look lovely, that is.”

Jensen and Padalecki exchanged glances. “Thank you?” Padalecki said, tentatively like he was accepting an unsought and unwanted gift. A small woman, made dark by whorling tattoos that started at her elbow and swirled up around her neck interrupted and asked Hiver to dance. Hiver shot a furtive glance at their little group before accepting.

“I’d like to dance,” Julia said pointedly.

Derry’s face was pained. “I’m not good at dancing.”

“I don’t care,” Julia replied firmly. Derry sighed and nodded at the dance floor, and they left, leaving the two behind to the solitude of the potted planet. Padalecki sank back down to the bench with an exhale of relief.

“My best friend cannot fall in love with you,” Jensen said, watching Hiver wheel around the room, the tattooed woman in his arms.

“Not to worry, I’ll be really mean and say his haircut makes his head look like a pencil the next time I see him. I’ve always wanted to tell him that.”

Jensen rolled his eyes upward and shook his head. Padalecki spotted the buffet and demanded that they grab food. He filled Jensen’s plate up with strawberries and grapes and little slices of cheese.

“Is there a reason you can't have a plate of your own?”

Padalecki waved him away. “Girls don’t do that.”

Jensen very much doubted that, but before he could say as much the archangel Barbiel climbed onto the dais and the chatter and noise stopped.

“ _Sabha, sabha,_ I bid you welcome on the vernal equinox,” he said, addressing them with raised arms. He started into a long rambling speech that sounded like the summation of the fourth quarter earnings of a corporation.

Jensen quickly tuned it out. Padalecki sucked at his teeth with his tongue, trying to get a piece of strawberry out.

“…and though it might appear that our ranks are dwindling, let us ever be mindful that they are swelling, people turning to our cause. That we are bringing the other to heel.” Jensen couldn’t help but pay attention to that. Padalecki sensed him stiffening beside him and grabbed his elbow.

“…that one day we might take back the earth and impose order upon it again.”

“Because everything that’s different is at fault,” Jensen whispered bitterly sardonic. Padalecki made a strange face at him.

Barbiel smiled down on all of them, completely oblivious to the disquiet of several of his soldiers. “‘For perverse thoughts separate people from God, and when his power is tested, it exposes the foolish.’ ”

“Amen,” the assembly said as one.

“What a lot of nonsense,” Jensen said, voice carrying a little. People were craning over their shoulders to get a good look at him. He saw General Suetonius, the base commander, straighten up out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t bring himself to care.

“What are you doing, idiot?” Padalecki huffed and started pushing him toward the door. “He’s not feeling well,” he explained as several of their acquaintances stared at their hasty exit. Hiver and Derry and Julia were walking towards them around the outskirts of crowd and Jensen started walking faster. He didn’t want to talk to them. Jensen glowered at the plebe manning the coat check until he scrambled off to get Jensen’s trench.

“Calm down,” Padalecki said softly, the hall they’d left behind thundered with applause and Jensen grabbed the coat out of the youngster’s grasp and walked out the front doors.

The night had grown cold, and Padalecki shivered in his flimsy dress. His small hand was still at Jensen’s elbow, fingers tightening reflexively as Jensen started to walk faster than Padalecki could easily keep up with in his heels. Jensen felt the shivers through Padalecki’s grip.

He stopped and Padalecki tripped to a halt. “Are we going back?” he asked, wrapping his arms around himself. Not enough body fat, Jensen thought critically and handed the coat over.

“What?” Padalecki stared at it a moment before realizing he was supposed to put it on. “Uh, thank you.”

Jensen had already started walking back to the living complex. Padalecki tripped over his heels trying to keep up. It didn’t make him slow down. They marched passed stoic sentries and the skeleton crew left manning the base with barely a proper salute.

“Ackles, slow down!” Padalecki stumbled a second time when they got to the stairs to the living quarters. Jensen knew he should feel mildly guilty, but like a child having a tantrum he couldn’t stop running away.

“What’s with you?” he said when they reached Jensen’s room and Jensen practically slammed the door open, trying to get inside. “You were making us sound like we’re selling orthodoxy in there!”

Jensen flexed his fingers and didn’t answer, but Padalecki was stubborn enough to wait him out.

“ _Other_! Aren’t the fey designated as other, and fire breathers, and shapechangers?” Jensen said, staring out the window. “ _Shaddai_ created all things so that they might exist.”

Padalecki fiddled at the straps of his heels, stumbling as he tried to undo the buckles. “Don’t say that word,” he sat down on Jensen’s easy chair and hurled one shoe across the room.

Jensen drew in a breath. “What?”

“Shaddai, the destroyer—you’re in the wrong place if that’s what you think of him.”

“What do you know?” Jensen said, feeling the bitterness spill out of the words. “You hardly care.”

Padalecki sprang up out of the chair, skirt rucked up awkwardly about his waist. He didn’t bother to pull it down. “There you go, bitching like you’ve got the market cornered on hardship. You’re only 23, what could possibly have gone so wrong in your life?” Padalecki was too close. He seemed fragile, perhaps as all half-seraph women deceptively appeared.

Jensen ducked his head. “What do you know?” he repeated.

Padalecki grabbed his lapel and heaved him back against the wall. Jensen reacted on instinct, catching the arm that held him pinned and twisting out of its hold. He reversed their positions, Padalecki glaring fiercely at him, pressed so hard back into the stone Jensen thought his bones would crack.

Padalecki punched him in the kidney, but Jensen expected it and turned sideways so the blow glanced off.

“What do you know?” he shouted, catching both of Padalecki’s arms and thrusting them flat, pinned up by Padalecki’s head. He shoved in hard with his body so that Padalecki couldn’t get a knee up into his groin. “Everything has always been a fantastic joke to you!”

Padalecki’s pupils expanded. He was close enough to watch the darkness swallow up the hazel. He felt the fine bones in Padalecki’s small hands shift in his grip and Padalecki made a small captured sound in his throat. Jensen realized he was hard, digging into Padalecki’s abdomen.

He let go abruptly, nearly tripping over his feet.

“It’s not a joke to me, I didn't--I didn't mean it that way,” Padalecki said softly, hand over his mouth. He dropped wide eyes away from Jensen.

Jensen opened his mouth to tell him to get out, but when he spoke, he said, “That’s what humans say when they ask to be absolved of their sins.”

Padalecki said, “I’m not asking you to absolve me, idiot.”

“Get out,” Jensen said, resisting the steady creep of emotion in his voice.

Padalecki didn’t leave. “Why didn’t you muster out?” he snapped.

Jensen rubbed at his face. “I don’t—”

Padalecki interrupted, “ _The other_ can be dangerous! They’re too close in kind to demons, especially fire-breathers.”

Jensen picked up a tin a muscle balm and hurled at the mirror.

Padalecki continued, even as the cracked glass smoothed out and reformed, voice going high-pitched, “Frankly, I’m surprised at you! You’re so conservative!”

He waited for Jensen to say something, but Jensen only shook his head, letting anger inflate him like too much air in a tire. Padalecki shook his head in disgust. “Well it doesn’t matter. You might struggle against the notion as much as you like, call your superiors close-minded, but it’s not going to change and you will be _separated_ if you continue like this.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Jensen shouted finally. “Why won’t you fucking leave?”

“You’re acting like you’re the one who’s turned into a girl!” Padalecki shouted back, flopping on Jensen’s bed.

“Why won’t you leave?” Jensen reiterated.

Padalecki unselfconsciously adjusted the straps of his dress and said, “It’s not in my nature.”

Jensen’s heart was bouncing around in his ribcage. It was distracting now that his temper wasn’t consuming him. He slumped back against the wall and repressed the urge to press his palm to it. “What are we if not ‘spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’”

“Hebrews 1:14,” Padalecki said softly. He made a face when Jensen arched a brow at him. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I paid attention in catechism!”

“You slept through it every day!”

Padalecki cleared his throat and stood up. “Look, I’m going back to my rooms. You think on what I said. We all live for this.”

He finally left, abandoning one three-inch designer heel haphazardly on Jensen’s floor.

*

He’d just got through his fifth game of solitaire on his desk before there was a knock at his door. Hiver was probably drunk in a ditch somewhere so that ruled him out, but he had no idea who else it would be. The knock came a second time while he tossed his cards down. He answered it and found Padalecki on the other side.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, makeup still smudged under his eyes. A band t-shirt he must have borrowed from Julia stretched tight over his chest. “Go Cyprian side.”

Jensen didn’t want to go anywhere. But he thought about Padalecki wearing heels and smiling next to him before he’d run off. He'd had the opportunity to ruin everything. He could’ve made Jensen look like a fool. He wasn’t altogether sure he wouldn’t have done the same. And he wasn’t wrong about the…other thing. As much as Jensen wanted him to be blindingly astronomically incorrect, it didn’t make it so.

“All right,” he said and went to look for his wallet and fake ID. Padalecki smiled and pulled on the trench Jensen’d lent him. It was too big in the shoulders for him, but Jensen thought it probably would be too small when he was back to normal.

“My car, or yours?” Padalecki asked as they walked down the long halls to the garage.

Jensen shrugged. “Mine, I guess.”

He was parked on the third level, just by the elevator. He clicked the electric key and smiled in satisfaction as his Tesla Roadster’s tail lights lit up and blinked.

“ _Indictum sit_!” Padalecki said, lips parting. “That’s your car?”

Jensen shrugged and opened the driver’s side door. Padalecki stood staring at it in wonder. He got in when Jensen started the engine.

“I feel like I’m sitting in the Mach 6!” he ran a hand down the side of the seat. “Is this microfiber?”

Jensen grinned at him, turning to look over his shoulder to pull out. “I don’t believe in leather interiors.”

Padalecki snorted. He had to tell him where to go, because he hadn’t been Cyprian side for anything but the mission since he was little. “Park over there,” he said, jittering excitedly in his seat like a little kid. “I could kill for a milk shake.” They’d spent the entire ride over pushing the little Tesla’s limits in the fast lane. Padalecki’s hand had been clenched on the door handle, but he laughed the whole time.

They walked silently to the ice cream shop. They didn’t have a whole lot to say to each other. And Jensen knew that Padalecki could chat up a storm. Padalecki played a game on his cell-phone when they waited in line, cursing every time his character lost a life. Jensen shoved his hands in his pockets and wondered what they’d do here. They’d passed a movie theater on the way over, but Jensen could never sit through those, so he hoped that wasn’t what Padalecki had in mind.

Padalecki ordered a chocolate milkshake with a generous portion of whip cream and sprinkles and waited while Jensen debated between pralines and mint chip. He startled when Padalecki paid for them both. They left the shop, and Padalecki swallowed down a big helping of his milkshake and nearly moaned. “I’ve been dying for chocolate ever since it happened.”

Jensen spooned some Mint chip out of his cup and took a bite. “Maybe you’re menstruating.”

Padalecki turned to him, horrified. “What? Ah man, total dick softener! Never say that again.”

Jensen couldn’t help laughing. He watched Padalecki suck hard on his straw and eye the tall buildings that rose up around them. “You ever been roof hopping?” Padalecki asked, directing his eyes back to Jensen.

Jensen furrowed his brows. “Yes, nearly every time we're on patrol? You've been there?” Padalecki whacked him. Jensen’s right shoulder would be one massive bruise before this was over.

“I don’t mean on patrol,” he said, blowing his hair out of his face. “I mean for the hell of it.”

“Doing that on base is a bit like buzzing the tower.”

Padalecki’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Ahah! You’ve seen Top Gun! One pop culture reference! One! Well, good that it's that one.” Jensen shook his spoon at him, but Padalecki merely smiled. He didn’t say anything after that, just sucked contentedly on his milk shake and walked down the street with Jensen. It was a foggy night, and the sky was stained red from reflected light.

They walked away from the shops into a more residential area where dark apartments loomed above them. Padalecki caught his eyes and then chucked his empty cup into a trash can. He took off running. Jensen blinked after him, lips parted in shock and had to make a choice—stand here waiting for him to get back from whatever lunacy he was about to take part in or go after him.

He looked down at his half-finished ice cream and then tossed it into the trash and ran after him. He caught up easily. Padalecki wasn’t attempting to lose him. He leaped up onto a dumpster and from there a fire escape. Jensen followed a few steps behind.

“You’re derranged!” he said, vaulting up the steps and following the path that Padalecki had laid out. They reached the roof of the building and Padalecki ran headlong at the ledge. “What if they see us?” Jensen cried, legs pumping.

Padalecki glanced over his shoulder and said, “Let them, it’s good for them to know there are things out there in the night.” He pushed off the ledge and landed on the opposite edge, the corrugated roof of an old high rise. Jensen calculated the trajectory of the landing and sailed over the busy street below, cars and people passing by, barely noticing the dark shape that arced by overhead.

Padalecki turned and ran sideways, hurdling over electric cables and lightning rods. They dashed roof to roof, barely breaking stride. Padalecki stopped looking back over his shoulder and accepted that Jensen would be following behind. Their feet ate up ground, springing up from the bricks and plaster like they were rushing across a trampoline. Jensen realized he was laughing, breath getting stuck in his throat like he might choke, but still he ran on.

There was just the barest hint of a breeze, but his face still burned from the touch of cold. He wondered how long they’d keep this up, if they could run a disjointed marathon from skyscraper to skyscraper. Padalecki stopped up short at one building’s door to the stairwell and threw it open. Jensen had to skid inside before it closed. The door banged shut behind them, echoing against the concrete walls. It was at least fifteen flights down.

Padalecki jumped up on one banister and leaped down to a lower one on the flight below. Jensen shook his head and then slung his legs up over the barrier, dropping down after him. They continued in that manner—Padalecki leaping off walls and railings like a gymnast making his own playground and Jensen just a few feet higher—until they reached the bottom.

Padalecki fell back against the wall, gasping in air. His cheeks blazed with color and the newly acquired breasts heaved. The ascetic lighting made his long hair look blue. Jensen braced himself on the banister and simply let himself breathe.

“Your eyes,” Padalecki said panting and broken.

He swore, hands flying up to his face. His eyes were shining like a cat’s when they caught the light. Padalecki dug in Jensen’s jacket pockets and pulled out the mirrored-shades he’d stolen from the commissary.

“Here,” he said and placed them on his face. Padalecki’s fingers skimmed over the shell of his ear before he drew back. “The more you come here, the better you’ll get at controlling it in front of the humans.”

Jensen shook out his shoulders. Two guys walked through the door at that moment. “Fucking elevator’s stuck again,” they said drunkenly. One fellow gave Padalecki a very pointed onceover.

Padalecki’s lips twisted into a frown. “Sure you didn’t just forget how to push the button?” He pushed past one of them hard, shoulder knocking into the guy’s collarbone solidly. Jensen winced as the guy stumbled into the wall and fell flat on his face. He stepped over him to get outside.

“Men are pigs,” he said when they reached the street.

Padalecki stared at him for a long moment. “That wasn’t a hint, was it?”

*

There was a little DVD rental store down the street, posters of new releases in the windows. Padalecki smiled when the door jingled as they went through it.

“Are you going to rent one?” Jensen whispered.

Padalecki shrugged. “Why not?” he said flippantly.

Jensen stared at him and then shrugged back. Jensen had gone Cyprian side on educational visits once a year after he was fostered off. They’d all worn identical t-shirts and stiff line-dried jeans. They’d walked down an endless mire of streets, and been told very carefully not to stare because none of them could control the glowing of their eyes.

One young boy had spotted a little store overflowing with VHS tapes, attracted by the by the bright packages of candy sitting just inside the door. Their minder was a bitter fourthie who’d barely any trace of the _shekhinah_ in his features, but whose empathic ability had made it too difficult to live among the humans. He’d gone inside a dusty shop with a peeling sign that said Morris  & Sons, and when he found them in the video store, looking at the anathematized movies in the horror section they’d had to go without dinner and scrub floors with lye for a week.

Padalecki held up a case and whooped. “I’ve been meaning to see this for weeks.” Padalecki stared at him. “Hey, where’d you go there?”

Jensen shook his head and grabbed the box from Padalecki, turning it over to read the back. “This sounds unbelievably stupid.”

Padalecki tugged it back. “It’s not supposed to be an insightful work.”

Jensen rolled his eyes and walked off among the racks, cataloguing the different genres. He got to the very back of the store and found himself staring at a shelf that wasn’t nearly so religiously alphabetized as the other shelves. Voluptuous women splayed themselves in awkward positions, skin bare. He felt Padalecki join him.

“Pornography,” Jensen said, staring at the boxes, face twisted in distaste. “Humans are so strange. This looks utterly repellent.”

Padalecki snorted with laughter. “Come on, we should get out of here.”

Jensen looked up and found the clerk staring at them, eyes narrowed. “Does he suspect?” he whispered.

Padalecki shook his head. “He thinks we’re in a bicycle gang or something.” He grabbed Jensen’s elbow and dragged him out of the store. “Have a nice day,” he said brightly to the clerk before the door swung shut.

“But why would he think that?” Jensen asked as they started down the street.

Padalecki held in a laugh. “You’re pretty, but you also look like you could cut a bitch.” Jensen made a face and Padalecki smiled. “Yes, that one, and your clothes are too utilitarian. Makes ‘em nervous. You should just be glad they can’t see the tattoos.”

Jensen sighed and let Padalecki pull him into an arcade. Padalecki found an old-fashioned old west themed pinball machine and stuck quarters into the slot. He lost the first ball right away, but smiled like he was just so happy to be alive that nothing could shake him. Jensen leaned up against the wall next to the machine, and watched the other people in the arcade. The air was filled with pinging and clanging, tinny music from each of the machines. He wrinkled his nose at the shooting games. People stared at him as they walked by, eying his mirrored shades and shaking their heads. He did his best to look politely neutral, but he realized his face was much more used to a grimace.

He turned to Padalecki who was toggling the flippers and cursing. He placed his palm flat on the glass. “It’s kind of amazing that someone could’ve invented this.”

Padalecki lost the pinball again and stood straight, catching his gaze. “Strange really, I mean, who had the idea for a game where you hit a ball around a slanted table?”

Jensen smiled. “Humans don’t make sense,” he said, and Padalecki nodded his head at the door. They knocked shoulders as they walked out, comfortable.

“I heard the pontiff’s selling indulgences again,” Jensen said. “God must laugh at such folly.” He darted a look at Padalecki and continued when he didn’t say anything, “Humans can be such fools, even the ones that believe.”

“Easy to call them fools when we have unshakeable proof in every moment of our lives that he is real. God is god. He does not need their love or their faith. He is without pride or vanity. It’s his place to judge.”

“Deep,” Jensen said, mouth catching at a smile.

Padalecki rolled his eyes and elbowed him. “I can see now I’m a bad influence! Do you know Lucian Ben Michael?”

“Luke?” Jensen replied, “Yes, he made my swords.”

“My mother used to say when I still lived Cyprian side and saw her barely once a month, that we don’t just protect the humans because they can’t protect themselves, but because they have something we don’t—they can create symphonies and buildings and chocolate cake you’d kill to eat, and yes pinball machines too—and that’s why Luke, a _thingmaker_ , is so precious. How many purebreds can do what he does?”

Jensen dropped his eyes.

Padalecki caught his sleeve. Jensen looked and saw the nails were ragged like Padalecki had been biting them. “You’re too hard on people, Jensen. You’re too hard on yourself.”

They walked in silence. Jensen thought about shrugging Padalecki’s grip off. He wanted to explain himself, explain why things were the way they were, but he couldn’t fit together the words.

He looked at the sky. It never looked like this firmament side, it was too clear, rendered as God had intended. He’d watched sunsets here, stained tropical pink by pollution, and thought there was something beautiful in that too.

His cell phone buzzed at the same time that Padalecki’s did. Padalecki stared at him in horror. Jensen picked up and listened to the clipped electronic voice telling him there was a situation on Pulaski near West Garfield Park, all soldiers in the area to make their way immediately. They must have used their GPS to assess that they were within a helpful distance.

“I’m not armed,” Padalecki said desperately.

Jensen tipped his sunglasses down. “I have stuff in the car.”

“How many are out there?” Padalecki asked as they sprinted back to the parking garage. Jensen wished they hadn’t blown their energy haring up over the city skyline.

“Two squads, armed with automatics.”

“Two? How many people in that area?” They ran through a family of five returning to the parking garage, purchases spilling out of their arms.

Jensen said, “That’s the problem. There’s nothing strategic there.”

“What do they know that we don’t know?” Padalecki mumbled under his breath.

Jensen unlocked the car and they dove inside. He put the car in gear and back out of the space in a single breath, avoiding a car trying to find parking and accelerating out of the lot several miles upwards of the speed limit.

“I don’t suppose you thought to get it cloaked?” Padalecki asked.

Jensen punched a button on the dash. Nothing changed inside the car, but people who had formerly stared at the flashy car practically driving past the sound barrier now looked right through it.

He parked again fifteen minutes later. It was two blocks away, the closest they could get with the concussions that rocked the ground. Jensen popped the trunk.

Padalecki came around the side. “Jesus! You have an entire arsenal in here!”

Jensen ignored his blaspheming and pulled out several knives. “Stay away from the Ruger, the trigger needs work.” Padalecki went for the matching Springfields as Jensen loaded a magazine into a 9mm. “Do you think your wrists can handle that now?”

Padalecki pulled a face. “Boy, I could outshoot you any day.” He folded Jensen’s coat and placed it on top of the gleaming pile of artillery. Another blast rocked the ground. “I think that’s our cue.”

As they got closer, the area around them started to show signs of combat. Several cars were overturned and the windowpanes were empty. Aside from the continuous pop of gunfire there was no sound. They found two seraphs from the light-skirmishers taking cover behind a pockmarked Toyota. One, a girl with V shaped tattoos on both cheeks, rolled to her knees to fire over the hood. “What’s the situation?” Jensen said, ducking down behind the car.

“Ah shit, wasn’t sure if anybody was coming,” the guy shouted over the noise. “They’ve managed to trap our communications within so we can’t reach Firmament side.”

“They’re getting smarter and smarter,” Jensen said, “Must have a human supplier.”

The guy shrugged.

“They got us pinned down with a sniper,” the girl said, ducking back down again to reload. “We’ve already lost one and I don’t know where the rest are.” She took in their street clothes. “Were you on leave?”

They didn’t get a chance to answer. The glass in both windows of the Toyota exploded over their heads. When they rose back up, Padalecki had a deep cut arching over his cheekbone. He blinked and the cut started to knit together, bloody flesh disappearing.

“Does it hurt?” Jensen whispered.

Padalecki had a calculating expression on his face. “Not for long.” He scanned the area and drew in a breath. Jensen didn’t know what he could possibly be thinking. He was just about to say, ‘don’t do anything stupid’ when Padalecki grinned and said, “I wish I was wearing a sports bra” before leaping up over the hood, firing rapidly, and tearing off across the street.

“What’s she doing?” the girl screamed. “Elohim protect us! Sulla,” she shouted at the guy “provide her with cover.”

Jensen ducked back down against the car, staring at the destruction all around him. The house in front of him had a Big Wheel lying on the lawn next to a little plastic kiddy pool. There weren’t any bodies anywhere, but that was almost worse. A poor residential neighborhood. Hispanic, mostly. They were all gone—women, children, errant fathers and watchful grandmothers—like they’d gone on vacation at the same time. He looked down at the semi-automatic in his hand and thought maybe he could make it. Before he could convince himself out of it, he darted around the rear bumper, running under the burst of bullets.

“They’re both crazy!” he heard the woman with the v-shaped tattoos cry. He saw Padalecki drop someone with a single shot and kick in a doorway, before he had to roll behind a fence. There was shouting coming from inside the house now, barely discernible over the continuous volley of gunfire. The sniper fired at the Toyota again, one more and he’d have to reload. Jensen waited patiently, keen ears tuning in until he heard it. A good marksman could shoot and reload in three seconds. He’d have to get to the door in that time. He pushed himself into a crouch, braced against the cheap wood fence, getting ready to run. At the first attenuated bang, he sprang up over the fence, crossed the yard and leaped up the six steps the porch. Just as he crossed through the door, the frame splintered and he dove down.

He was just rolling to his feet when he heard a creak of the floorboards. A figure moved fluidly from the backdoor into the foyer, red flashing eyes the only warning he got. He ducked under the first knife strike, whirling so that his own knife strike caught her across the stomach, gutting her. She screamed and fell against the stair banister trying to hold her insides in. Jensen cleaned the knife off on the lapel of her uniform and then he crept up the stairs, semi-auto held before him. It was quiet upstairs. He hoped, fear and despair flooding his mouth, that it wasn’t too late. He couldn’t believe himself. He was acting like it was his first patrol.

The stairs curved around and around in the house, covered in damp poly-fiber carpet that smelled of mold. The danger of stairs was that any loose board might sound his arrival. He reached the top landing and found Padalecki backed up against a flimsy IKEA entertainment center. Padalecki signaled quiet with one gun-wielding hand. His left sleeve was torn and there was blood at the corner of his mouth, but other than that he seemed perfectly hail. Jensen glared at him. This unnecessary risk-taking, it was exactly why he hated Padalecki so much. If they got through this without a hospital trip, Jensen would drown him. Just watch Padalecki try to regenerate from that.

Padalecki pushed him back against the wall with his arm and craned carefully around the entertainment center. He looked back at Jensen and held up four fingers. Jensen couldn’t hear anything, but demons could be just as silent as angels. They waited for the four soldiers to come in range and it felt like forever. There was a sudden thud on the stairs. Jensen watched in horror as two more demons came rushing down the stairs, shouting in surprise when they saw Jensen and Padalecki and fumbling to raise their weapons and compromising the hiding place in one fell swoop.

“Take the stairs,” Padalecki shouted and spun out around the cabinet, firing at the four demon Berserkers coming toward them. Jensen didn’t take the time to breathe. He hurled the knife at the one on the right and fired at the one on the left. The first flipped over the stair railing and fell to the stair well below, but the second had dodged the shot and came at Jensen hard, rapiers lashing out like whips. He shot at her again, but the trigger had jammed and he tossed it aside with a curse.

Jensen only had one knife left and he caught the first strike on the small blade and barely avoided the second. She pressed him back, her reach significantly longer than his, and hooked the blade out of his hand with one crescent slice of steel. He tripped trying to elude the next slash. Padalecki shouted his name, but he was caught across the hall by two demons. Jensen’s demon grinned, her eyes red with the kill, and he thought, God, this is the saddest way to go as he found himself backed up against the opposite wall. She tumbled forward suddenly, brain and bone exploding outwards above his head. He had to roll to avoid being skewered by her swords as her legs stopped holding her up.

The house went suddenly quiet. There were only the weak moans of the demon bleeding to death in the hallway. Padalecki breathed heavily, holding himself up on the entertainment center surrounded by three broken corpses. “You rely too heavily on your ability to regenerate,” Jensen said, still lying on the floor.

Padalecki glanced over at him and carded a hand through his hair. “I wish I had a hair tie.”

A figure at the end of the hall moved into the light, stepping over fallen demons. Jensen hiked himself back up to his feet, hand scrabbling at the sword. The knot of the _Princeps_ caught the light at her shoulder and he calmed, reaching up to touch his own before realizing it wasn’t there.

His eyes caught the glowing end of the Heckler & Koch in her hand. “I think you saved my life.” Padalecki snorted. She shook her head affectionately and her hair moved, revealing the tattoo that curved from just under her jaw to her ear—the word _Michael_ in tight calligraphy. Marked as all children of God’s favored angels were. “You’re Lavinia Bat Michael,” he said, voice almost reverent.

She was silent a moment before presenting her hand. “Lavinia _Turner_ ,” she said, sounding a little funny. “Nice to meet you.”

They both shook her hand and she shot Padalecki an odd look before looking at Jensen and then back to Padalecki again. “You’re not a girl, are you?”

Padalecki almost dropped his guns. “How—how could you tell?”

“You don’t feel right in my head.” There was another large bang and the entire house groaned, floor shifting under their feet. She flattened herself against the wall to peer out the window. “We’ll have to save this ‘til later, they’ve got a grenadier out there.”

Padalecki smiled and bent down to unhook something from a demon’s belt. He held up the small timed explosive and said, “So do we.” He hefted it and said to Lavinia, “How’s your aim?”

She held her palm up, brows raised, and he tossed it neatly to her. Jensen turned away to recover his knives. One from the floor and the other wedged in a demons throat, sunk all the way down to the vertebra. He saw the blast from the window on the lower landing, the house next door going first bright with light, and then completely dark, debris raining down all over the place.

“There was a certain poetry in that,” Lavinia said, smiling. She skipped down the stairs to join him. “Let’s go see the damage, shall we?”

“After you,” he gestured ahead of him, waiting for her to pass. Padalecki was staring at him oddly from the top of the stairs.

“Are you flirting?” he said, unloading the empty magazines of the guns.

Jensen stared at him, mouth open in wordless fury. He flipped Padalecki the finger and then stomped down the stairs after Lavinia.

The skirmisher’s unit was almost decimated. Domitilla, the woman with the v shaped tattoos, and Sulla were the only surviving members. Lavinia’s unit wordlessly moved through the streets, searching houses and inspecting the street. Coming back again and again to tell her they had no new information. Lavinia sighed and wandered gingerly through the house the sniper had taken position in, pacing past fallen bodies. The floor creaked and groaned ominously and Jensen and Padalecki followed behind slowly.

“There was something here they wanted,” Jensen said, shaking his head.

“God only knows what,” Lavinia said, aware of the irony.

In one room, the sleeve of a demon had rolled back, exposing his forearm. She picked it up in one gloved hand, turning it over to reveal the twice bisected triangle and v raised in black that marked a Demon soldier.

“It’s funny,” she said, “that they hold this same tradition of marking their warriors. They even use the sinister arm.”

Jensen found a charred laptop next to one of the bodies, but he couldn’t tell if it belonged to the demons or the owner of the house. He picked it up anyway. “We do it on the sinister arm to warn them off. They do it as a taunt.”

Padalecki inspected another body. “‘Ooh, look at me, I’m so evil?’ That’s incredibly lame.”

Jensen straightened. “Are you incapable of taking anything seriously?”

“Hey, dude, a little positivity never hurt anyone.”

Lavinia stared at both of them, watching as they both got distracted from what they were doing and started gearing up for a fight. “Hey, hey, why don’t you to go home? My unit can take care of this. The cleanup crew’s en route. They’re going to set the place on fire and claim it was a gas leak.”

Jensen heard his father’s voice, reading from the Deuterocanonical texts _,“‘We were born by mere chance and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been.’”_ Jensen shuddered and remembered the name scrawled into her skin.

He didn’t bother to fight. When he caught Padalecki’s eye, he was peering at Jensen again, trying to search him out. It made Jensen uncomfortable. Finally, Padalecki turned and ducked under a low-hanging rafter. Jensen watched after him and set the dilapidated hardware in front of Lavinia.

She glanced up at him and said, “Fertility orchids?”

“Yeah, the pollen,” he said, shifting uncomfortably.

Lavinia nodded her head absently. “Looks like you two caught somebody’s attention.”

“What?” He stepped back.

She smiled and wouldn’t say anymore.

The streetlights were still on, but the sky had begun to lighten. Their clothes were completely destroyed. Jensen counted four bloody holes in the back of the shirt Padalecki had borrowed and swallowed, imagining bullets piercing flesh. It shouldn’t be, but it was somehow worse now that he was a girl, hips swaying as he walked ahead, hair hanging in a dusty mess.

The Tesla sat undisturbed, pristine, as if nothing had ever happened at all. Jensen wasn’t sure he had the energy to drive. Padalecki paused and said, “You want to stop for coffee?”

Jensen picked at his torn, dusty clothing and laughed. “Yeah, why not?”

*

After exhorting Padalecki not to spill any of his Americano on the seats, they headed back Firmament side. He drove cloaked on the empty highway, not wanting to tempt fate and light up some poor schmuck’s radar just as they got back. “You should see _The Fast and the Furious_ ,” Padalecki said, licking excess coffee off the lid. When they passed over the barrier Jensen heaved a sigh of relief. Nothing had gone wrong because he left the base. In fact, it had been a good thing.

The verdant lawns of the base looked dour compared to the bright lights and busy people Cyprian side, but it was the only home Jensen had really ever known, soothing in its unchanging state. Maybe he hated it, but it never had the ability to alarm him.

He parked in the same space back in the garage and Padalecki yawned and stretched when he stepped out of the car, shirt riding up to reveal a flat stomach and hips. Jensen busied himself with locking the car and getting his coat out of the trunk. They walked back in silence, but it wasn’t the same strained affair of earlier in the evening. Their footsteps echoed down the halls, and Jensen imagined that he could hear the walls sigh with the breaths of their sleeping occupants.

Their shoulders brushed together and he felt warm at the contact, remembering how Padalecki had looked in that dress, leaning up against him in the perfect parody of a girlfriend. They stopped in front of Jensen’s door.

“Well, that was interesting.”

Padalecki scrubbed at his eyes tiredly. “Next time, I’m taking you out and hopefully no freaking Satanists will ruin the evening for us.” He winced and gave a sheepish smile. “Er, I didn’t mean for that to sound like it sounded.”

Jensen shrugged and said, “I understood what you meant.” They were too close together again. Jensen could feel the heat off of Padalecki’s skin. Padalecki gazed at him for a long moment and then he stepped in even closer, backing Jensen up against his door, palm resting on the frame right next to Jensen’s head. Jensen shot a quick glance at it and then said, “Uh, I’m the man.”

Padalecki’s hand dropped and he started laughing. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes. “You’re the man,” he repeated and laughed until his face turned red. He slowly quieted under Jensen’s severe gaze. He bit his lip and straightened his back like he was gathering the courage to face an execution and said, “So be the man.”

“Why do you want this?” Jensen all but whispered.

Padalecki’s lips quirked. He said, “Always with the hard questions.”

Jensen blew out a breath. He said, “I’m going to regret this for the rest of my life,” and kissed Padalecki up against the wall.

Padalecki blinked when he pulled back, “You call that a kiss?”

“I hate you,” Jensen replied drily as Padalecki’s fingers ran under his shirt, an unbearable teasing glide.

“So you keep saying. Nothing a good lay couldn't change.”

Padalecki kissed him again, an arm hooked around his neck and those breasts pressed against Jensen’s chest. The corners of Padalecki’s mouth tasted salty like sweat and Jensen’s fingers found the ragged bullet holes in the back of his shirt. He shuddered, edging fabric back to press against smooth new skin.

Padalecki put a whisper of space between them and said, “Are we going to do this up against the wall?”

Jensen snorted, hand drawing tight in shirt fabric, kept them pressed together even as he pressed his fingers to the locking mechanism. It swung open soundlessly and Padalecki lead the way through. Jensen paused, leaning against the door, waiting for Padalecki’s next move.

He smiled, stared at Jensen beneath his eyelids, and drew his shirt up over his head without preamble. He fidgeted at the clasp of his bra, trying to wriggle out of it when the two halves wouldn’t part. Jensen chuckled and stepped up behind him, unhooking it easily. He eased the straps down Padalecki’s shoulders and skated his palms around to cup Padalecki’s breasts. Padalecki arched his head back onto Jensen’s shoulder and moaned when his thumbs skimmed over taut nipples. It was easy, too easy, to press his lips to Padalecki’s shoulder, dip his tongue into the hollow of his clavicle. Breath came harsh in his chest, and he was hard again, pressed insistently against the rounded swell of his ass.

Padalecki took a deep breath and caught Jensen’s hands, drawing them away. He turned and unfastened his jeans, maintaining eye contact as he pushed them down his hips.

“No underwear?” Jensen said thickly, struggling with the zipper on his own pants.

Padalecki stepped out of them, watching Jensen intently as he pulled off his clothes. “It seemed awkward to borrow a pair.”

Jensen swallowed. “You mean in that dress—”

Padalecki grinned. “Wasn’t wearing any.”

Jensen kicked his pants aside and tipped him back on the bed. He leaned over him, bending his head to tongue a line down Padalecki’s sternum towards his navel. Padalecki was tanned smoothly everywhere and Jensen didn’t even want to think about how that came about.

“Don’t fuck around with foreplay,” Padalecki growled, rubbing the smooth inside of his thigh against Jensen’s side.

Jensen shot him a quick glare and then clutched his hips, dragging him down the bed, thighs spreading to accommodate Jensen. He grabbed his wrists, pressed them back to the bed, and said, “For once you’re going to shut up.”

He dropped his mouth to Padalecki’s distended nipples, favoring them with light brushing kisses, until Padalecki’s hips were involuntarily grinding against his. He was silent, only harsh breaths escaped his lips. He rocked his hips again and Jensen’s dick slipped between his folds, running over his clit. They both groaned, and Padalecki’s legs tightened around his thighs.

Jensen let go of Padalecki’s hands, but Padalecki kept them up there, rosy-tipped breasts pressed up by the arch in his spine. At the first purposeful lick between his folds, Padalecki jerked.

“You’re actually—good at this,” he said, strained, thighs trembling as Jensen swirled his tongue back and forth, just pressing into his slit. “I mean—n-no offense, you’re just such a celibate.”

Jensen reached up and flicked one nipple, just hard enough to sting. Padalecki’s laughter washed over him and he felt himself harden further. Sweet infinity, how could he feel like this? He reveled in the taste of her yielding until the taste of his own mouth was all there was. He wanted to lose himself in Padalecki until his bones melted. He reached down, gripping one delicate ankle. He thumbed around the bone and then tugged Padalecki’s foot flat on the comforter, spreading him wider.

Padalecki exhaled and said, “N—not a—mm—bad trick.”

Jensen smiled, sucked Padalecki’s clit into his mouth, tilted his hips up with palms under ass. He came apart effortlessly after that. Padalecki warned him, probably out of habit. His hands flew up to grip the headboard and then he simply sighed, muscles clenching and then slowly relaxing.

“I want to fuck you,” he said, eyelashes fluttering as sex flush slowly dissipated over his skin. “That’s all I want.”

Jensen dropped his head, gripping his dick so that he wouldn’t come right then. When he finally slid inside her, thighs rucked up around his waist, the three black bands tattooed around his forearm seemed to clamp down and tighten. His breath caught in his throat and he had to close his eyes to Padalecki’s guileless face.

*

When he woke the first time, he found Padalecki asleep in his bed, naked to the waist. He stared at the long slope of his spine and the bony jut of shoulder. He couldn’t quite believe what they had done. He stared at him and thought of how delicate he looked. It was disturbing. The clock read eight AM and they didn’t have anywhere to be.

“If you’re brooding, I’m the one who has to worry about being gay,” Padalecki said, turning over to face him.

Jensen paused and then said, “Are you?”

Padalecki fell flat against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. “No, I don’t think so—but I think maybe girls are more flexible.”

Jensen propped himself up on his elbow. He offered a tentative “Yeah?”

Padalecki shrugged, hand pulling through his hair in a now familiar gesture of contemplation. “I mean, when I was getting changed with Julia and her friends, I was all over that.” Jensen grunted and Padalecki’s mouth fought desperately against a smile. “But then, I look at you, and I’m interested. And let me tell you, I was totally apathetic before.”

Jensen raised his eyebrows, Padalecki smiled and leaned over him, propping his chin on his sternum. “I certainly never noticed that your eyes are really green. Hell, maybe I’m still totally attracted to women.” He brushed a finger over the swell of Jensen’s lower lip.

“Oh shut up, I’m going back to sleep.” Jensen rolled out from under him and presented him with his back. He sort of thought Padalecki would get up and leave, but the mattress didn’t shift behind him. And when he woke the second time, he found his arm thrown over Padalecki’s slim waist, chin tucked into the curve of her shoulder. He scrambled back, dragging the covers with him.

Padalecki groaned and covered his eyes with his arm. “What time is it?” Jensen’s stomach growled and the clock read 12:30. Padalecki stretched his arms above his head, breasts exposed and unconcerned. “I haven’t slept this late since I lived Cyprian side.”

He hopped out of bed, naked, and went to the bathroom. He came out with Jensen’s tooth brush in his mouth and a cup of water in one hand. Jensen wasn’t even surprised.

“Your room is such a prison cell, you know?” he said, pulling the tooth brush out of his mouth.

Jensen shrugged, lazing under the covers. For the first time in months, he felt relaxed, clear headed. His bones felt gelatinous, muscles like water. He thought that if he wanted to, he might be able to sleep the entire day. Padalecki went back into the bathroom to spit out his mouthful of toothpaste. Jensen didn’t hear any noise after the sound of the tap, and it made him nervous. He opened his eyes to find Padalecki holding his _Bulla_ , the chain still draped carelessly over the shelf.

Jensen froze. He wanted to shout at him to put it down, but Padalecki turned to him, eyes so wide under his dark lashes that he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Padalecki walked to the bed, _Bulla_ in his palm and turned the medal over, displaying the name etched into the back. Ash was still embedded in the carved lines, no polishing or scraping had ever drawn it out. “Jensen Ackles Aed Vangelis.” He looked at Jensen, lips parted. “ _Aed Vangelis._ You’re a fire breather.”

Jensen squeezed his eyes shut tight. There came a touch on his right arm right over the ink that banded it. “That’s why you wear the binds,” Padalecki said softly. “I always wondered.”

It roared up in his blood then, flames pushing at the spell that held his pyrokinesis dormant. He had to forcibly tamp the urge down. Jensen turned his face away, muscle in his jaw ticking. “That’s all you have to say? Nothing about how my kind is inevitably going to fall and burn up the world?”

He felt the now familiar smack of Padalecki’s palm on his shoulder. “Stop that, idiot.” Padalecki glared, the effect somewhat ruined by his nakedness and the long legs that Jensen couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of. “I just, suddenly I understand so much about you. You’re such a cylon because you have always stayed Firmament side. Although, seriously, don’t you have internet?”

“Yes, I have internet.”

“You must be surfing the weather channel then, buddy.”

Jensen wondered if Padalecki noticed that he traced continuously over the line of the binds with his thumb.

*

They went out to pizza for lunch. An artsy little place with an outdoor section. Jensen was afraid his fair skin would burn, but Padalecki demanded a seat outside. He generously gave Jensen the seat in the shade and sat soaking up all the sun as they waited for their server to get to them.

“I think that when God created men, he instilled in them the ability to create pizza,” he said, tugging at the sleeves of his shirt. He wore his own too baggy clothes again, but he’d found a hair tie.

“You’re more heretical than I am,” Jensen said, swirling his straw in his Coke.

Padalecki cleared his throat and asked, “Why’d you join the Corps?”

Jensen started and stopped, caught out. There were times where he wasn’t sure why he’d so desperately devoted his life to it and others where he knew with absolute simplicity that this was the only thing he wanted to do, that he could do.

“My father took me to see one of the Triumphs when I was about six or seven, my mother was already gone by then, so it was just the two of us, and everybody was laughing and cheering, watching this great parade go by.” He took a long swallow of his iced tea. “And there was this little boy, a halfie or a fourthie toddler I guess, who was kicking up such a fuss. His mother let him go for one instant and he ran out into the parade, right into the ranks of horses and infantry marching incessantly by. It was like time froze, we were all so sure he was going to get trampled, but nobody seemed to be able to move to do something.”

Padalecki stared at him, fingers laced in front of him. Jensen heaved in a breath. “And this woman on horse, she broke rank and scooped him up right before a big charger pounded the poor little guy right into the earth, and I thought—I thought I wanted to be like that, able to move when nobody else could.”

Silence caught the air between them—neither of them quite sure what to say.

Finally Padalecki said, “That’s way better than my reasons, with my mother, I simply always knew I was going to. That was my purpose in the world.” Their pizza arrived and Padalecki said, “And now, on to happy things.”

*

Two weeks went quickly by. Padalecki made him listen to the Rolling Stones and explore the streets Cyprian side while Jensen attempted to give him lessons in being quiet. They avoided the practice courts and the weight room and Jensen tried desperately not to feel guilty. Mostly they stayed in Jensen’s bed, all in pursuit of knowledge for Padalecki’s quest to give better orgasms to women.

“Why don’t you just admit you’re a complete hedonist?” Jensen said, watching Padalecki move naked around the room. Sometimes Jensen could almost convince himself that Padalecki was a woman, but now, watching him stalk about shoulders squared and hips set forward, it was impossible to see anything else but the man behind the female shell.

“They’d probably send me to counseling or something,” he said. “Where’s my shirt? I want to get a bottle of water.”

Jensen made a non-committal noise. Padalecki finally picked up one of Jensen’s and ran out into the hall in only the boxers he insisted on wearing on the bottom. He came back fifteen minutes later and dove into the bed. Jensen laughed. He realized he hadn’t laughed so much ever since the night his home went up in smoke. It should’ve been a sobering thought, but it only made him want to laugh more.

*

“Have you ever been to Rome?” Padalecki asked. He swiftly climbed a tree, pants pulling tight over the long thighs that Jensen was getting too used to feeling wrapped about his hips. Jensen bit his lip and sat unceremoniously between two gnarled roots.

“How would I have gone to Rome?” he said, staring over the lake and imagining the broken rim of the Coliseum pushing up into the sky.

Padalecki paused. “Right, sorry.” His voice came from far away, and when Jensen looked up he could see only shoes dangling down over a branch. “Someday, you should go.”

“Alright.”

“No, I’m serious,” Padalecki replied. “I went with my brother just before our final year at the academy.” He didn’t specify which one. Jensen almost wondered if he was familiar with all the children Tsaphiel had imparted life. A branch above bounced and showered Jensen with leaves. “Pay attention, I walked along those streets and I don’t know what it is, but it’s like they can see us better.”

“They can _always_ see us.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Padalecki laughed. “No, it felt like a tiny bit they could see what we were. Less sight blind.”

“There’s much Roman blood in our veins, of course it would call kinship to the city.”

Padalecki swung down out of the tree, landing like a cat in front of Jensen. He leaned in and kissed Jensen. “You are such a ruiner.”

“What?” He pushed Padalecki’s hair back behind his ear, before he smacked his hand away.

“You take the magic out of everything,” Padalecki said it affectionately. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, they flared silver. When Jensen blinked they were back to hazel.

He looked away and saw Tarquin jogging down the path. He had a heart rate monitor strapped to his chest and an mp3 player hooked around one bicep. One of the ear buds fell out, and he stuck it back in, frustrated. He barely even saw Jensen and Padalecki sitting under the shade of the tree, just a polite nod of acknowledgement that etiquette demanded.

“How come _he_ hasn’t noticed you?” Jensen asked.

“Tarquin?” Padalecki said, propping his chin on Jensen’s knee. It always surprised him how affectionate Padalecki was, but he remembered even as man, Padalecki had always seemed to touch too much—patting people on the back, ruffling hair, hugging. “If I spent time with him he’d notice. He’s always making fun of the way I talk.”

“Not that! How come he hasn’t noticed you—er man-you is missing?” Jensen said. “He’s your best friend.”

“What?” Padalecki said. “You don’t think I’m idiot, do you? The first thing I did was request leave to visit my father.” He snorted. “You should be glad I did, because if I disappeared he’d be investigating you for murder.”

“ Why me!” Jensen covered up his flinch with mock outrage. _His father_. He wished he had that option.

“You’ve tried to kill me at least twice! It’s not like it’s beyond the realm of imagining.”

“Oh, shut up.”

*

They went to the dining hall early every night, before Hiver and Derry and Julia could join them. It was a godsend on the day that Lavinia showed up, sliding into a chair next to Padalecki like she’d been there all along.

Jensen jerked and before he could get so much as a hello out she said, “We finally have intel on what happened at West Garfield Park.”

Padalecki set his fork down, expression impassive. He glanced at Jensen and said, “Yeah?”

Lavinia kept her gaze on Jensen as she said, “One of the families had adopted a fire-breather boy of significant skill. He called the demons to him.”

Under the weight of Padalecki’s gaze, Jensen said slowly, “How do you know that?”

She pressed her palm over Jensen’s. “I just wanted you to know that nobody questions your involvement.”

Jensen sat back in his chair, meal forgotten. Lavinia nodded once at Padalecki and then got up, leaving the dining hall as quickly as she came. Jensen stood up, chair sliding back with a hollow skid. He didn’t bother to dispose of his meal, he just left. Padalecki didn’t follow.

*

He squeezed multiple rounds off at the range, imagining his long-unused ability to wreath himself in flame. Fire used to bring so much peace, now he couldn’t even own a lighter for fear someone would talk. His shots were erratically clustered around the target, a sign of his anger. He couldn’t seem to hit the center, and the harder he tried, the wider the bullets tore through the paper.

He felt Padalecki enter the room and didn’t turn around. If he had something to say, he would. He wanted to run to the seraphic high council and _demand_ answers. Infinity, it was like racial profiling, statistical fucking discrimination.

Padalecki waited behind him. With every moment he didn’t say anything Jensen’s rage escalated. He used up the clip and slammed the gun down. “What do you want?” he said, flexing his forearm under the binds. The thick black bands of ink shifted with his muscles and he sneered.

“I don’t want anything,” Padalecki said gently. It exasperated Jensen more than anything.

Jensen loaded another clip into his gun with a methodical click. “This is the time to leave me alone.”

“You’ve been retreating for years,” Padalecki pointed out, he sat down on a bench, elbows to knees. The front of his shirt gaped. Jensen could’ve looked down it if he wanted. He didn’t.

“And beating you up,” he said, and turned back to the range.

Padalecki got up. He said, voice full of derision, “Is that what you want? To fight?”

Jensen remained silent, staring at the pockmarked bull’s-eye down the range. He was just pulling the trigger when Padalecki tugged his arm, whirling him around. The bullet went through Padalecki’s side, just below his ribs. The bang seemed cacophonously loud. Padalecki gasped high in his throat, and he dropped his hand from Jensen’s arms.

“Jesus,” Jensen blasphemed, dashing forward as Padalecki, leaned back against the wall. Padalecki pulled bloody hands away from his wound and it had already healed. “Why would you do that? Why?”

Padalecki stared at him evenly.

“And you wonder why you annoy me so much?” He turned back to the gun and swiftly dechambered the magazine. “You’re fucking reckless. You take big chances on things that matter too much! What happens if you don’t heal one day? What if the enemy lays out dampeners, your abilities won’t work and _you’ll die_. Not to mention you might cost the entire _contubernium_.”

Padalecki wiped his bloody palms on his ruined shirt.

“And you keep trying to understand me!” Jensen said, pushing out of the booth. “Like I’m some kind of psych patient.”

“Because you’re fucked up, Jensen!” Padalecki shouted back. “You’re fucked up.”

Jensen kicked over the bench, and it flew into the opposite wall so hard the wood splintered. “My father burned himself down in our house so that the Powers would not take me after he made a mistake!”

If it weren’t for the binds, he could burn the world to cinders right now, and he wouldn’t blink. Not because it was his nature, but because they’d made him that way, he hoped they knew that.

“I have given up everything to be in the Corps,” he hissed. “My fire, Cyprian side…and what does it get me? ‘Nobody questions your involvement.’” He paused for one moment, almost overcome. “So you tell me how to be normal, Mr. Perfect, since you seem to have it all figured it out.”

Padalecki didn’t flinch. Jensen didn’t see how he could be so implacable. But maybe when every part of you that broke, you could make new, nothing had the power to change you anymore.

“You haven’t given up the anger,” Padalecki said.

Jensen smacked him hard across the face, watching his handprint bloom and fade across Padalecki’s turned cheek. “Don’t preach.”

Padalecki’s jaw worked, like he was meditating something. Then, so quick Jensen barely saw him move, he struck back, catching Jensen unsuspecting, right under the eye, and as his face exploded in pain Padalecki reached up and kissed him. Jensen gasped, swaying toward the wall, trapping Padalecki with his body.

“It isn’t working, Jensen,” Padalecki said as Jensen hitched him up against the wall. He wrapped his arms around Jensen’s shoulders and bit at his lips. Jensen thunked Padalecki’s head back against the wall and shoved the ragged and bloody shirt up over his breasts. He thrusts their groins together hard, pushing an oomph out of Padalecki.

Later, as he tried to sink into sleep, he couldn’t be sure how he had got their jeans open, how he had took Padalecki against the wall, and again outside by the lake, with Padalecki rolling on top, scratching down his chest, and cursing. Padalecki had rocked on top of him and there was little doubt in Jensen’s mind that he was the one being fucked.

He told Padalecki, with his head thrown back, how his father had gotten involved in the conflict in Chechnya, believing that God would understand when he massacred a Russian company to save lives. But God had not understood. Meddling in human affairs was anathema and the powers had come for Campbell Brodie Ackles. He had told Padalecki this, and Padalecki had told him to shut up, to let it go, had kissed him quiet. But he stayed enigmatically silent when Jensen asked how the ink of the wings could stay in his skin when he regenerated.

Jensen didn’t really need an answer. He had never thought, in a thousand years that he might well live, that he would tell that story. To a person who admittedly did not understand. And yet, he had done so, for two weeks, he had told his story. Maybe only Padalecki could know, maybe he could only hear it, because he’d seen Jensen at rock bottom. He sighed, traced lines down Padalecki’s long spine, and waited for exhaustion to finally flood him into sleep.

*

The next morning when he woke up, he found himself facing the broad-back of a man. “What the—” he started, practically falling out of the bed in his effort to get a way. He knew it couldn’t last.

He woke Padalecki who asked, “What?” and then bolted up straight in bed at the sound of his own voice. He looked down at his flat chest and palms. Jensen turned away when Padalecki reached under the covers and cupped himself. He sighed in relief when he found what he was looking for, but all Jensen could think about was his plunging stomach.

“I’m back!” Padalecki said, scrambling out of the bed. Jensen kept his head carefully turned away, waiting for him to pull on pants. “This is cause for celebration.”

He glanced at Jensen, who had wrapped the sheets tight around his waist, and drew up short. “Oh, fuck.” He fished his pants out from under the bed and clambered into them. He tried to say something several times. Jensen couldn’t even bring himself to look at him. Padalecki’s hair fell just over his brow, his jaw had hardened. Hard to believe the masculine features had so easily yielded to feminine ones. He felt sick. Padalecki shoulders and hands were broader than Jensen’s now.

“I should—I should go,” Padalecki said. He gathered the rest of his stuff up into his arms and inhaled deeply, before nodding. “Yeah, I should definitely go.”

“Jared, I—” he stopped. It was the first time he’d ever used Padalecki’s _praenomen_. Padalecki’s eyes were intent upon him and Jensen felt naked despite the sheet wrapped around him. Padalecki’s mouth did a funny curving thing like he was trying desperately to smile, but then it flattened out, expressionless.

When Padalecki walked past he still smelled the same and the whispery heat that had inhabited his belly for the past few days rose up in him again. He coughed and nodded a quick goodbye. And then Padalecki was gone, the door clicking shut softly behind him. Jensen swallowed. He looked around the room dispassionately.

Now that Padalecki was gone there was no reason his quarters should be such a mess.

*

They resumed active duty rotation after that, going out and engaging the enemy. They didn’t fight anymore. They didn’t speak. They didn’t look at each other. But they worked well. Captain Lewis watched them very closely.

Jensen stopped moping around his rooms. Hiver frequently had to fetch him out of the library.

He sat amid the dust and books, the ascetic portraits and the relics of the grand past, when things were easier, when humans weren’t so much collateral damage. One evening Hiver found him on the floor, staring at the faded remains of the ceiling mural.

“Seriously?” Hiver said, hunching down cross-legged next to him. “Have you gone insane? Did Jared dump you?”

“I was just thinking, I could restore that,” Jensen said, running his eyes along browning finials and smeared perspective.

Hiver’s eyes darted around the room before settling back on Jensen. “Can you actually draw?”

“Yes, I can draw!”

“I don’t know! It’s not like I’ve ever seen you.” Hiver crossed his arms.

Jensen folded his arms under his head. “Well I can.”

“Next you’re going to start designing Tiffany windows,” Hiver said, shoving at him with his foot.

“What?”

“Just checking that you weren’t possessed or anything.” Hiver laughed.

Jensen rolled his eyes, said a dry “Thank you.”

Hiver paused. “Hey, do you wanna go see a movie?”

“Over the margin?” Jensen asked. Hiver nodded. Jensen turned his head to the wall, thinking. His ash-marked _Bulla_ sat on a shelf in his room, a constant reminder. “Fuck it, why not?”

Hiver punched him in the shoulder. “You failed the test! You’re totally possessed.” But he got up and offered his hand to Jensen. “How do you feel about comedies?” he said as they headed for the door.

“I feel pretty good.”

*

One night the alarms went off and the base went into motion like a dormant machine firing up. Everybody frantically shrugged their uniforms and body armor on to get out there, fixing their knots to mark their formation with adrenaline-shaking hands. “ _Commanipulares_ ” echoed through the emptying halls as steady as the bells of a clock tower.

Jensen arrived late, dashing in from the lake. Hiver was already gone. He noticed Padalecki stripping off the t-shirt he’d stolen from Jensen. It had hung awkwardly on his frame then, but it stretched tight across his shoulders now. He couldn’t believe he’d kept it. Jensen hadn’t even noticed it missing.

Padalecki sensed his gaze and he looked up. Their eyes met across the controlled melee of the locker room. The sirens were still blaring, lights flashing, and Padalecki smiled and tossed him a pair of sunglasses. Jensen caught them and watched him hoist his gear up and walk out to the transport, joining the growing ranks of black-clothed soldiers with a straight spine. He thought, be safe.

I can’t do it without you.

I never have.

*

The sun hung low in the sky. Lucius Suetonius, Commander of the Chicago Base and an excellent swing at a golf tee, puttered about in his office, reorganizing stacks of paper and trying to clean up for the day. He was too tired to sit here and review paperwork. Some days riding a desk was more tiring than being out in the field waiting for the base alarms to ring and send them all out at all hours of the night. He kicked the cup he’d been using for putting practice and sat down in his old leather executive chair in a huff. He eyed his bottle of brandy and decided to pour himself a little tipple before he left.

“A bit early for that, don’t you think?” a voice said from the shadows in the corner of the room where his coat rack stood.

He dropped his brandy glass, and it shattered on the floor, fine alcohol seeping into his shoes rather than his gullet. “Ugh,” he said, digging in his pockets for a handkerchief.

The voice said, “I’m sure you’ve heard that Padalecki and Aed Vangelis have started getting along.”

“By all accounts, I can stop figuring the damage they do into the budget,” he said grumpily, giving up on the mess on the floor and looking for another glass to pour his brandy into. He looked at the shadows around his coat rack. “Are you going to hide back there the entire time?”

A man in a lavender pinstriped-suit stepped in the light, youthful face looking impossibly old and sharp at the same time. He smiled at Suetonius.

“Metatron,” Suetonius said, “I should’ve known he’d be behind this. What a grand plan it was to turn Padalecki into a woman, now I’ll just have to deal with his therapy bills, won’t I?”

“We had not figured upon them sleeping together, just thought maybe they’d get along better.”

Suetonius took a long gulp of his newly poured glass of brandy and glared. “Liar,” he growled. “ _God created all things so that they might exist_ , huh?”

The Metatron laughed. “Our motives were as pure as the driven snow.”

Suetonius drained his glass and said, “Yeah, after a tractor has driven through it a few times.”

*

 _Consummatum est_

For a story this large, it kind of goes without saying that there are some acknowledgements. The biggest one goes to people who will never read this, and that's my Fiction Seminar. Because they put up with this when it was half formed and almost half the word length. I didn't take any of their suggestions, but it did give me food for thought.

Because I thought submitting RPS to my class, might be a bit much, I saddled Jensen with the name Torin Brodie Gall. Jared was Tristan Valerius. TORIN AND TRISTAN. C'MON, it's genius.

Also, in reference to Chad's surname, the Tarquinnii were an infamous family during the Roman Regal period. Tarquinius Superbus was the worst and last king of the regal period, and it is his son, Sextus Tarquinius, who raped Lucretia, and set the revolt in motion that brought about the Roman Republic. I love Chad, but he deserved an infamous name, and I was hardly going to call him Strabo or Catiline.


End file.
